I agree the mods could and should have done a lot more to protest more effectively as you said. Reddit will be around for a long time to come I suspect, but in a steadily decreasing manner, with its effectiveness and relevance as an (often good) information source fading away.

The captchas that involve identifying letters underneath squiggles I already find nearly impossible - Uppercase? Lowercase? J j i I l L g 9 … and so on….